Focusing on the ILO, this collection brings together a variety of new scholarship by a group of highly qualified and internationally renowned scholars in the field of global history and the history of international organizations.

In 2019 the ILO will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Although we know the ILO has a unique and long history, how much do we really know about its highlights and crises, innovations and changes, opportunities and setbacks? Test your knowledge and learn fascinating facts about ILO history at the click of a mouse. Want to contribute? Send us your questions.

The ILO Century Game is now available as a board game for 60 CHF. More info: Pubvente@ilo.org

ILO Century Project

The ILO and its government, employer and worker constituents have a rich experience of social dialogue, setting and supervising international labour standards, promoting employment, social protection and fair conditions of work, and international cooperation for social justice.Towards the ILO Centenary in 2019, the aim of the Century Project is to illuminate the history of the world of work and its actors. Building on the experience of the past, it endeavours to forge alliances with partners around the world in the pursuit of social justice for all.

Geneva International Cooperation, which profiles the Canton of Geneva as a stage for international affairs marks the anniversary with a feature on the Convention’s history and highlights historical issues such as the case of Poland’s Solidarnosc trade union. Convention No. 87 was adopted by the International Labour Conference in 1948. It has since been ratified by 152 member States.

The International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), Austria, announces the 50th Linz Conference. The conference focuses on the exploitation of human labour in the range of forced labour and debt bondage, which contrary to chattel slavery, have received little scholarly attention. In spite of the gradual abolition of slavery (understood as the legal ownership of humans) in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, other forms of coerced labour persisted in most regions of the world.

The ILO has facilitated a roundtable discussion to review the struggle against apartheid leading to the process of democratization and change in South Africa. Looking at the role the Organisation played throughout this period which eventually brought unions and employers together in challenging the apartheid state.